Thread by @HBJohnXuandou

Okay gonna put my thoughts down for Streets of Rage 4.

As one could probably guess, I think it's a very good game. Even just beyond that though I feel like it's what I wanted this game to be. It hits all the perfect Streets of Rage elements that I think of when I think SOR.

I was kinda worried about what the enemy variety would be like and how the AI would work, but it's all fantastic. Of course there's quite a bit of it that gets a bare minimum pass because they take so much from the originals, but all of the new enemies are really good too.

Not to mention they put some interesting combinations of enemies together that get pretty hairy. I've always said the level design in a beat em up is not the actual level, it's the enemies and their placement/combinations, and this game definitely understands that.

Even that being said they do try to make levels more interesting than just going from left to right or by having shit IN the level that you have to engage with on top of the enemies and that really forms some strong areas in my opinion. There's lots of strategies you can form---

on the environment you're in and that deepens the interactions you get to have with the enemies, and when you workshop your strategy for the stage and the enemies and the best way to clear them out and it all comes together, it feels super good. That's what I wanted from SOR4.

To me, SOR more than even most other beat em ups is a game where it's like no shut up learn the patterns and play perfectly or die. Every beat em up is kinda like that to some extent, but like Final Fight for example IMO just has more of an emphasis on spacing and footsies.

Both of these games have their crowd control elements and not getting cornered or swarmed, but Final Fight is more about learning attack ranges and when enemies like to attack and getting into beneficial positions. SOR is more like threat assessment and picking targets carefully.

Optimal ranges is still important, but what's more important is picking which enemies you need to take out first and then finding the opening to achieve that goal, which is why the stages have more of a puzzle feel to them where you have to solve the puzzle to survive.

4 feels like the most natural escalation of this design style and it's actually impressive to see a modern studio nail it in the exact same way and even add on top of it. This is not the style of beat em up/action game that is still in favor and isn't what most people would make.

I only played two characters so far, Axel and Adam. Axel is classic ass classic SOR and plays exactly how you would expect him to, which is great and fine and all, but I was kinda hoping he'd have maybe a bit more to him. He's faithful to almost a fault. He's not bad, but kinda--

boring to play as. Not that I didn't enjoy playing him, but it kinda just feels like SOR2 again. I started hitting some walls around stage 7 so I decided to try another character and picked Adam since he's pretty good in SOR1 and he's a big guy without being a slow piece of shit.

One of the first things I find out is he has a dash, which immediately makes him feel more fluid to play as, but also sometimes feels kinda fucked up. Like, being able to move like that is maybe too good. Also, his moves are buff as fuck this time around, he feels super new.

The third hit of his combo is a launcher that you can juggle off of and the 4th hit is a roundhouse that sends people flying and wallbounces. He's fucking wild. Needless to say I stuck with Adam for the rest of my playthrough, he was just way too fresh.

The art in the game is of course incredibly well done, it's well animated, the quality of the art is fantastic, but one of the things I kinda wasn't into before the game came out was the art direction, and having played it all the way through I kinda still feel that way.

It's definitely not as bad as it looked early on, but my big issue is that some of the environments don't quite feel so Streets of Rage-y. Most of them do, which is great and I feel way better about it overall, but some areas feel kinda post apocalyptic-y and it's weird.

That's about my only gripe with the art though and it's only a couple areas so I can't even complain too much because they don't drag the game down or anything. The last major gameplay topic would be the boss fights, and it's another area where this game did so well.

There's a couple fights that I feel like are more frustrating than they need to be, like the first Estel fight where she calls in her SOR1 cop missiles, and I feel like that really kills the flow of the fight because you're trying to find an opening, but when you do, a missile---

is coming down on top of your head and you just need to back off and give up your opening, which is kinda weak. You can play around it of course, but sometimes you just have to reset the situation so you don't die. Also the final boss fight against the Y twins together.

When Mr. Y gets in his giant mech and starts doing his big steppy attacks, I feel like pretty often it's really hard to tell what attack he's doing and which part of the screen is unsafe, which makes that whole thing kinda annoying when it doesn't need to be.

It's still not as bad as the final boss fight in Ninja Saviors Return though, which is genuinely one of the worst boss fights I've ever played in any game ever and is a massive blemish on that otherwise stellar game. Nothing here ever gets close to that bad, just some annoyances.

The last thing I want to talk about is the music. They brought in a lot of talent for this soundtrack including the legend Yuzo Koshiro himself to put together a track that would live up to the Streets of Rage legacy and fit in line with what the series is known for.

It's okay.

Now, I want to put it out there that SOR DOES have a good soundtrack, but I think it gets overhyped because of Go Straight. It's otherwise just a solid soundtrack. This is also pretty good, but doesn't have any standout monster bangers. The Go Straight remix was raw though.

It all fits the theme of the game and sounds great in the moment and would probably be nice to listen to outside of the game, but nothing that is gonna blow you away. It's just a good soundtrack with nothing being stunning.

I'm incredibly satisfied with this game and it's more than I could have hoped for. I wish it included a training mode, but the package is still amazing anyways. I wasn't expecting much out of this game and it blew me away the whole way through.

9/10, definite recommend.